Another Day, Another Anti-Dollar
Uuuuugggg…
I decided to complain on virtual paper only. Now I know why they call them “bad” colds. I don’t remember getting stuff like this when I was a kid. [Or maybe it was just because I didn’t have adult obligations to fulfill when I was eight.] But there I was anyway, mucking through a day at the office, unable to decide which part of my body abused me more. Alright, so I wasn’t stretched out on the floor face-down or anything, but it was just uncomfortable enough to be continuingly frustrating.
Stole a few tootsie rolls from Ray Bolger’s desk…
The ladies from church who serve as wedding coordinators chatted in the conference room over an update-the-manual meeting. Sometimes I still have a chuckle over prospective brides who call in for the use of our facilities. Sure, if you want to get married in a warehouse, be my guest. No skin off my nose.
Oh, I’m so optimistic – look at me go!
On a higher note, I was feeling better by the middle of the afternoon.
I was reunited with my chubby independent, occasionally rude darling, when I left the office some time later after three o’clock. With crash helmet securely in place, he was drilling around on a newly fashioned extreme bike course behind the driveway. Uncle Joe pulling out all the stops, dirt ramps included. The younger uncle had tossed in another treasure, that being a hand-me-down black wallet stocked with two one-dollar bills. What more could a kid want? So while he continued being a boy, I joined Carrie in the kitchen over the glass of peanut butter cookies. Our fifteen minutes to fix the world. And by “world” I obviously mean any current outstanding immediate and extended family matters. Our weekly forum.
First thing home, as usual, Puck pounced after Crackers. Cuddling her next to him, he chanted…
“Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an English cat.”
While I pushed more fish down his throat, I allotted him a re-try at his Hallowe’en film, which had been cut short for trick-or-treating earlier in the week. Monsters, aliens, boy things. He hardly knew he was still eating fish.
The Bear decided to abandon his sheaf of Greek vocabulary notecards for the evening by joining some friends at a pub downtown for a sampling of whiskey, and then at the Sheldon for a Natalie McMaster performance with Curly and Lulu. Such refinery.
Meanwhile, the kids came over for Carrie’s latest two-dollar find from Amazon – some fresh creep-killer Canadian weirdness from 1999, featuring Michael Bublé’s younger sister as backup, apparently. And many Justin Bieber haircuts. Also apparently. I’m about as tuned into pop culture now as I was ten years ago. Carrie worked up a new hair dye on Rose – a dark chocolate brown, as best I could tell under the delicate lighting of a bare basement bulb – as we passed around Rose’s favorite Edy’s frozen strawberry all natural fruit bars, soft-baked chocolate chip cookies, and Reeses peanut butter cups. Of course no movie night would be complete without endless groans of disbelief, inappropriate comments from the peanut gallery, and a dark slimy slug centimetering across the cement floor, which Joe rescued. And also Rose’s uncanny ability to note the unique presence of rear ends in every single film watched, real or fabricated.
So, yeah, between The Bear and Collette… I’m guessing I got the better evening out of the deal.
Thought of the Day
I’m not sure if the rate of auto accidents has been on the rise since the 1980’s. I have no proof, haven’t researched it. But if it’s true, I might have a theory as to why.
Video games.
I get this idea, from some experience myself during the advent of “Flight Simulator 1996” or whatever, that in playing these games, we tend to build up this idea of false invincibility.
Why not take a flying leap off the edge of Mount Everest?
Sure, let’s try a barrel roll under the Golden Gate Bridge during an ice storm.
Oops, I died.
Reboot.
So when this sort of artificial Atlas strength and Time Lord invincibility ego unconsciously translates to the solid reality of pavement and three tons of painted steel, well…
Things don’t usually turn out so great.
No “god mode” in real life, folks.